Things I Love: A Pre-Valentines Day Post

Little known things I love about Jon...

1. If there's any kind of ball handy inside our house (big or small, hard or soft), Jon likes to toss it up in the air and catch it. In our old home (his parents' house) he would stand at one end of the hallway and hit a wiffle ball as far as he could to the other end of the hallway, much to my chagrine, since there were delicate decorations just waiting to be destroyed near the ball's destination. Still, I think it's cute that he's always throwing a ball if there's one available.

2. He also loves to whistle, and he's very good at it. Like tossing a ball, he does it almost subconsciously. In fact, he once got reprimanded by a high school teacher because, without realizing it, he was whistling during class.

3. The funny impressions he occasionally does of little kids.

4. His beautiful, but not often displayed, singing voice. I always hoped I'd marry a good singer, and I got my wish.

Random things I love about Tommy...

1. I occasionally find him holding a phone up to his ear and saying, "Hello, Monson?" "Hello, Eyring?," and "Hello, Uchdorf!"

2. He gives GREAT hugs, especially to his daddy.

3. Every morning he comes into our room and says, "I had a good nap."

4. His sense of direction, which is so vastly greater than my own. He recognizes the way to the library, the church, Papa and Nani's house, etc. It's kind of amazing.

5. He's a fantastic grocery store shopping companion. The only thing he ever asks for is a piece of bread.

Interesting things I love about Joey...

1. His thighs. Enough said.

2. His cheeks...kissing Joey is like kissing a marshmallow.

3. Joey has never needed a binky. Instead, he sucks on his own tongue, the inside of his lip, etc. He's always doing this cute sucky thing that would make amazing footage for a wedding video someday. It's hard to describe, but it's very endearing, and anyone who's spent much time with him will know what I'm talking about.

4. He loves strings. I can't even nurse him if I'm wearing a hooded sweatshirt because he's so distracted by the strings hanging down.

The Case of the Missing Buns

Tonight we lost a bag of hamburger buns. When I say we "lost" it, I mean that I served up three sloppy joes on hamburger buns, and when we were ready for seconds, the remaining buns were nowhere to be found. Seriously. We searched the dining room, the kitchen (including cupboards, fridge, microwave, oven, trashcan, and anyplace else we could think of), and various other rooms in the house. The buns were gone. We got false hope when we heard Tommy say, "I have buns" (causing Jon and I to chuckle childishly). We're not sure what he was referring to, but he didn't have the hamburger buns.

Unfortunately, we're also suffering from the Case of the Missing Camera Cord, which is why none of the cute pictures I've taken lately have shown up on the blog.

Maybe the buns and the camera cord are in the same place. Let's hope we find that stash soon!

We finally caught...something

Well, one of our mouse traps finally proved its worth. But we're not quite sure what we caught. It sort of looked like a small black mouse, but it had a short tail (shorter than its body), very tiny eyes, almost imperceptible ears, and weird toe nails (claws?) that were bigger on its front paws than on its back paws. If you're wondering about my very detailed description, yes, I did examine it carefully. Now I have its disgusting image etched in my memory!

So as crazy as this sounds, we actually suspect that we might have caught...a MOLE! This also might explain some of the weird behavior it exhibited, including not eating very frequently (at least as far as we could tell), not being attracted to some of our traps, and, weirdest of all, pulling one of Tommy's small toys up into the unfinished wall in our basement storage room (we could see it sticking out from the insulation).

According to the vast amount of information available on the world wide web, it's extremely rare to have a mole in one's home, so we're still assuming it was a mouse. But we did have a mole in our yard in this summer (one was caught by a professional), and this creature did look odd...

Anyway, I think this will be the end of my Mouse-Saga-Blog-Commentary, because I don't want you to all be grossed out about our house. Let's just say that the problem is now solved (or will be within a few days after some poison works its magic on any critters that might remain), and that our house is a great, clean place to visit!

But it was very therapeutic to be able to share my woes. Thank goodness for the blog.

Look What You Can Do in 16-Degree Weather!

About a month ago, our friend John Sharpe braved the cold weather with us to do a family photo shoot in the old mill district in Minneapolis. We had a lot of fun despite it being 16 degrees outside, and we LOVED his work. Here are a few of my favorite shots:

By the way, we'd highly recommend John as a photographer, and you can see more of the pictures he took of our family on his website at www.johnsharpephotography.com. (Follow the Clients link, then look for our family's name near the top of the list.)